Have you ever found yourself sitting on the kitchen floor at 3am rocking two tiny crying creatures to sleep for like, the fifth night in a row, using the cupboards to hold you up because you’re exhausted and you’re not sure when this cycle of insanity will ever end and you can’t even remember what day it is and all you can think about is how much work you’re going to have to get done when you “get up” in approx. four hours to start your day? And then you start crying because you’re way too overwhelmed and the wee ones are still fussing and what else can they possibly need?!

Motherhood, am I right?

Except I’m talking about these two:

I’m actually on the kitchen floor in this very photo…

I know to a lot of people, it sounds insane to compare the two, but I’m not sorry because I lived through it, and I may not have kids of my own, but I’ve taken care of enough babies to know what that’s like, too.

Did you know that raising litter mates isn’t recommended because they tend to be extremely developmentally delayed? Me neither. But when it took me almost a year to house break Oscar and Lucy instead of the standard 12-16 weeks, I understood why. I also started to question whether I really wanted to have human babies of my own when I realized I hadn’t slept well in over six months. Sometimes I wondered if I had made a huge mistake, but then they’d do shit like this:

Spooning. Swoon.

…and I’d forget what I was thinking and try to take a nap or get some work done because oh my god they’re asleep and maybe I can be productive for like, 15 minutes before they wake up and need me again!

As time passed, I overcame a lot of the biggest hurdles. I stopped feeling like I was covered in pee and/or poop 24 hours a day, which was nice. House breaking happened (FINALLY) and behaviours (mostly, but let’s not talk about leashes or barking…) calmed down. I started sleeping through the night again, which felt amazing.

But still, try to tell me not to feel like I have kids when I spend the night awake, rubbing Oscar’s back and cuddling him while he throws up and clearly feels gross and scared (the night before last), or when I get woken up in the morning by Lucy sliding her way into my arms for a hug (every morning), or when I’m rushing to put sweaters and boots (that’s eight, count them, EIGHT boots!) on so that we can leave the house in the icy snow (this morning)!

(Okay, I get that kids don’t pee in the backyard, but still.)

Also, they leave their toys EVERYWHERE, get bored and annoy me, go to daycare and fight with their friends, need lots of snacks to stay happy, always get sick right when I’m busy and wasn’t planning on staying home with them, make so much noise that I can’t hear the TV 90% of the time, get crazy jealous of my attention, like (nay, need) tons of attention and love, and expect that now that they’re in my world, it revolves entirely around them.**

And let’s face it, it kind of does.

And I kind of love it (97% of the time).*

xA

*So maybe I could do the whole kid thing after all.***

**This list could go on for days, including it takes me ten times longer to leave the house now, I can’t have nice things because they get broken, and someone keeps eating my lipbalms. Etc.